


This is your badness level

by Rupzydaisy



Series: places Villanelle should not have been [2]
Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018), Lilo & Stitch (2002)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Baking, Comedy, Gen, The AU no one asked for, on the topic of making friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-23 01:09:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19140553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rupzydaisy/pseuds/Rupzydaisy
Summary: To Villanelle's utmost displeasure, Lilo pulled out a notepad from the pile of papers beside her and began to outline the figure of a woman. She craned forward to see Lilo's handiwork and was surprised by the rough sketch of arms and legs wearing Villanelle's clothes, from her black leather jacket, right down to the golden rings on her hands. There was also a frowny face scrawled onto the circular head.“This...is your badness level.”Lilo grabbed a red pencil and drew a line skimming the top of Villanelle's head, cutting off her eyes and forehead from the rest of her body. With quick shading, she had coloured her in red all the way down to her strappy sandals. The she flipped the notepad around to display her artistic skills.“It's a rough estimate. I read your file on the flight over, and I’m not going to lie, it's pretty high on the scale. But not the highest I've seen.”Villanelle bristled at the thought that there was someone out there with a higher badness level, and wondered how much better at their job they were.





	This is your badness level

Carolyn had a face on. She also had  _the tone_ to her voice. A disapproving, harking-back-to-the-Cold-War kind of no-nonsense tone.

It suddenly struck Eve that there was no chance in wriggling out of this one and so she had dragged Villanelle into the office bright and early for this meeting despite her loud moaning and brilliant alternative idea for sacking off the whole week to flying to Milan for shopping.  

Carolyn was straight to the point as they walked into the room and took their seats opposite her.

"If you're going to be on this side of the jail bars, walking around freely, you're going to have to pay your dues."

Eve watched Villanelle slump in her chair dramatically and pull a face which Carolyn returned with a glare of withering disapproval. Her role here was to help keep the piece, and ensure that no one left the room in pieces. Eve nodded without any protests, and Carolyn’s irk lessened a fraction because there was at least someone in the room being contrite.

“Good. There's a contact of mine, comes highly recommended from an old friend. She's not technically a counsellor or a therapist but apparently she's very good at getting results in rehabilitation cases."

Eve nodded again despite Villanelle sinking lower in her chair with a look of mock horror and pure disbelief splashed across her face. Carolyn’s mouth twitched upwards, having got her way without so much as a squeak of defiance.

“Right then, I'll make the call. You can leave now.”

 

* * *

 

When Villanelle was shown in by one of Carolyn’s lackeys there was already a dark-haired woman sitting in the room.

Villanelle sat down on the blue sofa opposite and her eyes slid around the room. She counted three small red lights staring back at her, watching to make sure if she was going to behave. With a heavy sigh, she sunk back into the fluffy white cushions to appraise the woman. It hadn’t been her idea to have this meeting, but out of all the people she had sat opposite from in rooms just like this one, under the same sort of context,  _this_ woman was not what she expected.

She was pretty, with tan skin and wore a dark green dress covered in pale tropical flowers. And she didn't look stuffy and boring; she looked young. The woman put down her phone and stretched out a hand, speaking with a friendly tone that Villanelle made a note to learn to mimic.

“Hi, I'm Lilo. I'm from Hawaii.”

“I'm Villanelle. I live in Paris, usually.”

She returned the handshake briskly with a toothy smile and flopped back onto the sofa, spreading her legs to take up more room. Her gaze shifted away from Lilo and she glared at the red light on the empty coat hanger by the door. It was the closest one to take offence to, so she did.

Lilo followed her eyeline and grinned, “Yeah, I get it, you’re not thrilled to be here so let's get straight to it. I’m here to assess you and offer some suggestions. Carolyn Martens said she was looking to integrate you into a team. Are you looking forward to that?"

“I work alone, so no.” Villanelle told her bluntly, tipping her head to the side.  

Every single time Konstantin had taken her in to be reviewed, they had always been extremely clinical and cold. Those psychologists used their notepads like a barrier after listening her describe her past week or month. They hid behind it as if the plastic backing and bulk of paper could be used as a defence against her. Then there came the weighing of options.  _Was she still enough of an asset to keep around, or was she a liability?_

Konstantin would always mutter to her as he walked her into the room,  _Oh Villanelle, you make my job so much harder when you don’t behave._ Yet she always thought he sort of enjoyed it. It was like a little game they played. Carolyn was different, more of a sour lemon. Less smiles and more...red tape to snip through.

This Hawaiian woman seemed far too laid back to be a real psychologist.

“I see.” Lilo hummed loudly and focussed more intently on Villanelle.  

To Villanelle's utmost displeasure, Lilo pulled out a notepad from the pile of papers beside her and began to outline the figure of a woman. She craned forward to see Lilo's handiwork and was surprised by the rough sketch of arms and legs wearing Villanelle's clothes, from her black leather jacket, right down to the golden rings on her hands. There was also a frowny face scrawled onto the circular head.

“This...is your badness level.”

Lilo grabbed a red pencil and drew a line skimming the top of Villanelle's head, cutting off her eyes and forehead from the rest of her body. With quick shading, she had coloured her in red all the way down to her strappy sandals. The she flipped the notepad around to display her artistic skills.

“It's a rough estimate. I read your file on the flight over, and I’m not going to lie, it's pretty high on the scale. But not the highest I've seen.”

Villanelle bristled at the thought that there was someone out there with a _higher_ badness level, and wondered how much  _better_ at their job they were.

She stared down at the paper and nodded her head, “Uh-huh.”

“What I mean is, this isn’t an impossible job to bring it down to a more manageable level. So let’s not treat it like one.”

"Uh-uh."

She smiled encouragingly, “I think we can do some work on getting this level down over the next few days. What do you think?”

Villanelle smacked her lips together and gave a shrug. “What if I don't want to?”

“Then I get a week's holiday in London, all paid for. No skin off my nose.”

“You can go now then.”

Villanelle jerked her head to the door, not wanting to address the potential flaying of any skin under the ever watchful eye of the red dots. There was nothing she’d like more than to leave the room, the building, and preferably the country. Eve had tricked her into coming in, pretending that she would be assessed by the tactical team. She always liked showing off her skills, and figured Eve would be in the peanut gallery watching her take down a whole team of incompetents.

“No. I'd like to try first.”

Lilo threw her a smaller, more adamant smile as she flipped her notepad over. The paper crumpled under her fingers and she flicked her pencil back and forth with an air of determination.

“So, Villanelle, have you got any hobbies?”

“Shopping.” Villanelle replied immediately, because that question didn’t need any thought.

“Okay,” Lilo dragged the word out in consideration and scribbled down on her paper. “Is there something else you enjoy? Anything you like doing? Imagine it’s a rainy day, you’re feeling under the weather, what would you do to cheer yourself up.”

Villanelle crossed one leg over the other and pondered for a moment but found her mind blank. The little meeting that Carolyn had arranged had become annoying. She knew her other potential answers would be murder or sleeping with someone, and would be wrong answers. But she didn't know what the right one was. Milan was calling her. She wanted sunshine and her arms laden down by shopping bags, not England’s rainy skies and this persistent questioning.

She shook her head slowly, feeling more aggrieved with every passing second, “I don't think so.”

Lilo nodded sympathetically and walked over to her suitcase propped up by the wall. She lifted out a large photo album and brought it back over to Villanelle, who edged away when the young woman sat down beside her. Lilo flipped it open, shuffling closer to show an assortment of people in candid moments.

The majority of them seemed to not have noticed they had been caught mid-step walking down the street or lounging on the beach. There were pictures of men, woman, and children, old and young. Some were eating food, ice cream dripping down their chin and caught in the delight of it. Others were pointing fingers mid-argument. Lilo flipped over a page to show four friends sitting together and watching the sunset on a hill, wrinkled old couples walking hand in hand down a main street, and a boy walking three dogs on the beachfront. Villanelle hesitantly slid the album onto her knees to take a better look.

She turned and arched an eyebrow to mock the other woman. “Is this what Hawaii is like? These are some _strange_ photos.”

“Some of them are tourists, and some are locals. They're not that strange, I've hung some big ones in a gallery on the Big Island. People like how real they are, they feel the connection.”

Villanelle mashed her lips together, wondering just how weird these people were, and even more so about Lilo herself. The woman had done her research on who she was and yet she hadn’t batted an eyelid before sitting down beside her. That took a certain brand of bravery, or a streak of stupidity.

"I don't do  _normal_ things.”  

She got a scoff in return, "Normal is relative. I can tell you for a fact that my normal and your normal are nowhere near normal. Nothing you say could faze me."

This time, Villanelle was the one to scoff at her.

Yet, Lilo continued to push for an answer. “Come on, there must be something for you. It doesn't have to be a hobby you've had time for recently. Anything?”

Villanelle cast her thoughts back to the summer before when she would have been working on a mark with a penchant for desserts. She had enjoyed creating the medium of that particular murder. It had been relaxing in a way, following the recipe and matching her efforts to the glossy image in the book before lacing it with a specially prepared concoction of her own. She had even worn a polka dot pinafore and gracefully swooshed around the kitchen like an old American housewife.

Suddenly, she grinned enthusiastically. “Actually, I think I do have something.”

 

* * *

 

She rolled up the sleeves of her purple jumper as Lilo hauled the shopping bag onto the table between them. It had been a long two days sitting in the room talking. It was mind-numbingly  _boring_. Now Villanelle was jumping at the chance to  _do_ something, even if it involved going along with the Hawaiian’s plan of doing a hobby-related activity. And even if it meant wearing a boringly white apron.

“We have your ingredients. Remember...it's your chance to have a go. It doesn't have to be perfect, and it doesn't have to taste great. What's important is that you've tried.”

Villanelle paused from unloading items and was visibly shocked at the lack of confidence in her skills. She blinked twice and then was quick to protest, “No. It'll be good. Did you not read my file? My work is excellent. Always.”

“Okay then.” Lilo raised her hands in mock surrender and leant back against the table, giving Villanelle full access to the kitchen.

They were in the basement of the building, inside the industrial kitchen that would normally feed the busy worker bees upstairs. Villanelle briefly wondered if Carolyn had ever eaten in the staff canteen. It made a funny image in her head, picturing her eating a cheese sandwich at table full of other people. Carolyn had been reluctant to let her down there, but eventually gave in after Lilo had walked into her office and explained that she had a method, and that she shouldn’t have called her over from Hawaii if she wasn’t going to be allowed to do things her own way.

That had been fun to hear from the other side of the office door.

It was also fun to know that she had put out the normal kitchen staff, who had been told to clear the entire floor so that Lilo could continue to work with her.

She was far too special to have other people in the room with her. Villanelle popped a congratulatory strawberry in her mouth and then reached for the weighing scales.

Lilo hopped up to sit on the empty counter behind her and brushed off puffs of flour that had settled on her jeans. After taking care to watch Villanelle closely over the past two days, having had years of experience in befriending Jumba's experiments and helping them find their  _ohana_ and purpose. She retained that optimistic outlook with each one, and agreed to Cobra Bubbles' request to fly to London to help an old friend. It had been her chance to dig deeper to see if this assassin was actually looking for an  _ohana_.

Sometimes things could be found in the most unusual places. More often than not, you just plain stumble upon them.

“What made you think of this?”

“Oh, last year.” Villanelle measured out the sugar and butter before tipping them into a mixer. “I had to assassinate a politician who  _loved_ to eat fancy food. I wanted to stick his head in boiling caramel, but Konstantin told me to do something less messy.”

“Right…” Lilo frowned, and a hint of disapproval crept into her voice. “You know that’s something else you’re going to have to work on if they’re going to want to keep you around here.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” Villanelle replied with a noncommittal shrug, uncaring as always about the way other people viewed her. “I don’t ever have to make friends.”  

Then there was an unexpected growl from underneath the steel table that made her jump. Suddenly, she leaned back, taking note of Lilo’s concerned expression. Villanelle hesitantly crouched down to check out the source of the noise and saw a dog carrier case sitting on the lower shelf. It was zipped up but there was movement inside, accompanied by another loud growl that put Villanelle’s teeth on edge.

She lurched back. Her toes tingled and the hairs on the back of her arms rose up within the space of her next heartbeat. It wasn't often that she was unnerved like this. It reminded her of her training, and the tests she had to pass, each one more difficult than the previous. And all of them unusually difficult. A helpful reminder pinged in the back of her head; a small, blunt knife was in arm's reach.

“It's my dog,” said Lilo hurriedly, swinging her legs too quickly to be a calming influence. "Don't mind him, carry on baking."

“Sounds angry to me. Does it have rabies?"

“Rabies? No, he's shy but  _well behaved_.” She waved her hands at the small mountain of strawberries on the table. "Stitch knows better than to interrupt work."

With that, the growls subsided and the carry case grew still. Lilo looked pointedly at Villanelle who picked up her mixing spoon, still looking uneasily at the lower shelf. If the dog was zipped up, then she was fairly certain it couldn’t get out easily. Even if it ripped its way through, she’d have time enough to injure or kill it.    

“Good? You know if I’m going to be here supervising, I think I'll put on some music.”

Lilo pulled out her phone and flipped through the music library with a swish of her finger. A strange expression crossed her face and she stared at Villanelle intently. She tapped her chin thoughtfully and then seemed to have made up her mind about something.

“Any requests from the most amazing musician of all time?”

Villanelle paused with her hands inside the butter bowl, leaving deep, melting holes. She rooted around her memories and vague flashes of culture and radio songs bounced around, but nothing screamed  _amazing musician of all time_. It was times like this where the gaps in her knowledge irritated her, although other times they only reinforced the tedium of boring people’s lives.

As loathe as she was to ask, she did anyway, “Who?”

“What do you mean who? The King! Elvis?” Lilo replied flatly, stunned at the lack of musical knowledge.

Villanelle stared blankly back at her, feeling more annoyed than validated. If it turned out she had missed something important, she would send Konstantin a message about it. One he would remember for the rest of his sorry, sausage-filled life.

Lilo drum rolled on her knees before raising her arms, as if she was introducing a superstar performer, “Alright, prepare to be educated on what real music is all about!”

“Whatever.” Villanelle said as she reached for the strawberries to carry on with her assigned task, taking care to cram as many in her mouth as possible along the way.

“ _You look like an angel…”_

 

* * *

 

“I was warned your methods were unorthodox.”

Carolyn stared down at the plated dessert on the centre of her desk. The glaze shone under the soft lights from the wall sconces. The baked strawberries were a rich, deep red layer, and were covered in a light dusting of icing sugar giving it a very appetising look. The pastry had flaked a little and there were small, golden crumbs on the plate. It looked like it belonged on the cover of a food magazine.

Villanelle had been proud of it but within the three minutes they'd taken to sit down Carolyn had already managed to annoy her.

“Tart. It's a tart. I thought you would recognise it?” She hissed back scornfully, her equally red lips twisting up in disgust.

Carolyn grumbled under her breath as Lilo passed around plates and reached for the knife.

“It’s not unorthodox. Moving on from bad habits is the first step. Villanelle took something she enjoyed from the past and used it,” explained Lilo. “It’s how I work. I look for something which interests an individual and then see if there's another outlet.”

“The past?” Carolyn fixed her narrowed eyes on Villanelle and tapped a finger on the table as she struggled to place the feeling that had got her feeling uneasy. “...Barcelona?”

“Yes!”

Villanelle’s eyes were wide with surprise and she was smiling with far too many teeth to be considered enthusiastic. It hadn’t occurred to her that Carolyn had followed her work as closely as the rest of Eve’s team. Besides, Barcelona hadn’t been as showy or exciting as other jobs. Bern, Riga, Palmero, even Brno had more excitement to them.   

“Barcelona was cyanide.” Carolyn pushed her plate away from her. The frown lines on her forehead deepened and she crossed her arms.

Lilo looked down at the tart and asked slowly, ”This is an ordinary strawberry tart, right?"

“Strawberry tart, yes. Ordinary? No.” Villanelle replied, tipping forwards to see the sauce dripping down.

Suddenly, there was a rustling underneath the table. From between their chairs, a small dog with large, floppy ears and a big nose appeared and padded out onto the office carpet. It was also the most weird looking dog Villanelle had seen in her life. They all watched in silence as it shuffled forwards gracefully, each awkward paw step seemingly deliberate on the grey carpet.

“Stitch!”

“Ah!” Caroline craned her neck forwards. “I was told you would be travelling with company.”

“Your dog is  _blue._ ” Villanelle stared at the creature in confusion and disgust.

Villanelle wondered if it moved slowly because it was the sort of dog unused to walking, but Lilo didn’t seem like she carried it around in her bag. She watched with some degree of fascination as it clambered up onto Lilo's lap and put its front paws on the table to drag the white tablecloth towards itself. Inch by inch, the plate moved closer to its sharp claws.

“Sorry, he's not normally this  _rude_!”

Lilo looked alarmed, glancing back and forth between the strawberry tart in front of her and the dog. She tried to put the dog back on the floor, but it squirmed too much and seemed to be too heavy for her to shift. The blue dog had managed to pull the tablecloth over far enough to reach the strawberry tart. He leaned forwards to sniff at it intently and made loud snuffling noises before reaching out a dexterous claw.

Then Stitch swiped at the side of the dessert and licked what he had grabbed. With a quick wriggle he hopped off Lilo's lap and looked up at Villanelle to wag his stumpy tail.

“Woof!”

Lilo smoothed her hair back behind her ears and settled back in her chair. Her composure returned quicker than the other two, and while Caroline coughed to cover her embarrassment of being taken by surprise, Villanelle propped up an elbow on the table and continued to stare at the dog.

“Stitch... liked it?” Lilo said as she reached for her plate again.

Having gained her dog’s approval, Lilo grabbed the knife and cut out two more slices of the tart. She put them onto plates too before leaning sideways to place one on the floor. Immediately, the dog used his nose to push the plate underneath the table and out of sight. Then Lilo grabbed a fork for herself and tucked in.

“It's really good. Well done!”

A spark of pride flickered in Villanelle’s chest at the compliment. It was...nice. The assassin looked down at the remaining half on the plate and a flash of a small, genuine smile flickered across her face.

“And there's nothing  _special_ in it?” Carolyn asked dubiously, still eyeing the sauce pooling on the plate and sinking into the pastry.

“Just strawberries.” Villanelle replied truthfully, taking pleasure in watching the older woman squirm.

“Seconds?” Lilo asked when Stitch’s empty plate knocked against her shoe.

Villanelle answered with a full mouth, spraying crumbs all over Carolyn's desk, “Of course.”

She let Lilo slice three more pieces but took the largest for herself. They polished off the rest of the tart, leaving nothing but crumbs and a smear of icing sugar on the tablecloth. Villanelle licked her fingers and brushed the corners of her mouth with a satisfied smirk.

Carolyn rolled her eyes at her. She crossed her arms, the sleeves of her black blazer bunching up at the elbows. “Miss Pelekai, can you please explain what progress has been made?”

Lilo levelled back a determined look at the older woman and mirrored her stance before turning to Villanelle. “Okay, before I go, I do need you to tell me...what did you learn?”

“Bark, bark!” Stitch crawled out from under the table and sat down in front of the office door to stare up at Villanelle with his unnerving dark eyes.

Villanelle twisted from side to side in her chair. She glanced at the three of them while pretending to stare at the ceiling. She would have preferred to have her nails pulled out than admit anything to Carolyn Martens, although she could have suffered it if Eve was there to ask her.

A sinking feeling pooled in Villanelle’s stomach when she realised that she could have saved Eve a slice. Just to taste. Eve would have been surprised. She might have even smiled. After waiting a few moments longer, Villanelle scrunched her nose before dropping her shoulders. “Fine, fine.”

“Yes…?”

“I did it. I liked it." She said in a monotone.

Lilo continued to stare at her, expecting more. They were stuck at an impasse and eventually Villanelle found the silence too taxing as the Hawaiian girl's patience wore her down. That, and the fact that her creepy dog was  _still_ staring at her.

_Could dogs even do that?_

"To do something that other people appreciate. Apart from Konstantin. He normally just gives me postcards for my jobs and tells me well done when I've finished. And sometimes I make him buy me ice cream.”

Carolyn cleared her throat as she put down her fork. “Yes, well as delicious as this was, perhaps you can channel your more creative tendencies into new culinary challenges.”

“Ah! That would be the special ingredient." Villanelle told her mischievously, eyes lighting up as the older woman scowled at her.

Lilo pulled out the folded sketch from her pocket and drew a new arrow, just a fraction of an inch underneath the line of red bisecting her nose. Then she passed it over to Villanelle who had to accept the visual reminder of the last three days. The very idea that she could work with someone and not want to throw them down a flight of stairs still made her want to laugh. Nevertheless, she took the piece of paper and re-folded it along the creased lines. Then put it into her pocket without making eye contact with any of them, drumming her fingers on the side of the table.

“You still need to work on your badness level.” Lilo reminded, and it almost sounded like a scolding. She stood up and brushed her hands over the wrinkles in her dress."It's all about progress, but you made a start in the right direction."

“Woof!”

The dog padded over to Lilo’s suitcase and headbutted it towards the office door. Lilo petted him before grabbing her handbag.

“By the way, Stitch thinks you could do with making more friends. More opportunities to share your new hobby. I'll call in two weeks, and I look forward to hearing about your cooking!”

“I don’t care what your dog thinks.” Villanelle leaned forwards, resting her chin on her hands and her elbows on the table. "But okay, two weeks, if I'm still here."

While Carolyn was distracted shaking Lilo's hand, Stitch paused at the doorway and turned around in a circle. Then he stood up on his hind legs and raised a blue paw at Villanelle. Waving his claws at her, Stitch let his jaw drop and widen in a bizarre approximation of a smile. Inside his mouth, there were rows of large white teeth, far larger than any normal dog she had ever seen. Villanelle had never seen a shark before in her life, but imagined that this dog could easily rival one’s bite.  

"Woof!"

Villanelle's eyes widened but she didn't make a move or sound. She knew what it meant if she blinked first, and her own stubbornness refused to let her make that wrong move.

Lilo said her final goodbyes and left the office. Then Carolyn rebuttoned her jacket and motioned for Villanelle to follow her down the corridor, striding off quickly giving Villanelle the choice of trying to keep up, or perhaps threatening her to take her chances with a security team or two who were no doubt watching from hidden cameras.

"I have nothing to say to you aside from the expectation that you should cooperate better with the team we'll be placing you with."

For what felt like the umpteenth time Villane repeated her long standing mantra, "I work alone.”

"I'm sure you do, and we all know how good your work is,” said Carolyn sarcastically. “But if there's no improvement, I'll have to consider alternative measures. You’re too unreliable for independent work."

Villanelle puffed out her chest and was as dismissive as ever, "I've been in prison before.”

Carolyn shook her head lightly, knowing exactly how her next words would be taken. "No, not prison. I've heard that Miss Pelekai has her own remedial institution for individuals with certain, how should it put it, proclivities. I'm sure you'd thrive there if need be. Very much like her dog."

"No." Villanelle's eyes widened a fraction at the very real threat, and then patted Carolyn on the shoulder encouragingly, "I don’t need to go to Hawaii. I'll play nicer, I promise."

 

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: this fic could be seen as a standalone crackfic…or it could be seen as a wacky outtake from my other fic which is a tad more serious, multichapter fic: if we make it out alive (maybe we can do this right)
> 
> Nothing to do with what happens in series 2, because I haven't seen it yet.


End file.
